Framing, Filtering and Hermeneutical Injustice in the Public Conversation about Mental Health

Abstract

This article describes how the narrative construct is used in the Power Threat Meaning Framework to refer to personal narratives, cultural narratives and as a meta-theoretical language, synthesizing a range of different theoretical perspectives. It identifies ways in which this approach to narrative may differ from its use in a number of therapeutic traditions. Focusing on medicalization and drawing on the concepts of ideological power, framing, filtering and gatekeeping, it discusses the processes which facilitate the dominance of a medical frame in the public conversation about mental health, proposing that such dominance is an example of hermeneutical injustice. The article concludes, firstly, by suggesting some practices which therapists and other professionals could use to broaden and contextualize therapy conversations and, secondly, by making some proposals for how the public conversation about mental health could be re-balanced.

Notes

1 Some of the ideas presented here were first developed in conversations with Jacqui Dillon.